Alexander Stuart

Zhao Wei's So Young is a phenomenal success already in China. Leading Chinese actress Zhao Wei's feature film debut So Young has proven a huge box office success in China, taking 350 million yuan ($56 million) in its first week. Its nostalgic theme - a love story set in the 1980s and 1990s - has connected in a big way with Chinese audiences. Hopefully the movie - based on  the  best selling  Chinese novel,  To Our Eventual Lost Youth , by  Xin Yi Wu  - can expand its success internationally. Zhao Wei is a megastar in her native China. Also known as Vicki (or Vicky) Zhao , she has built a formidable reputation as an actress, pop singer and now director. She is one of the  "Four  Dan  actresses" in China (四大花旦), along with  Xu Jinglei ,  Zhang Ziyi  (best know internationally for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ) and  Zhou Xun . ( Dan originally referred to female roles in Chinese opera - but, aside from their box office power, you could l

Ang Lee's The Life of Pi (Courtesy: 20th Century Fox). The Wrap is reporting that genius Chinese/Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee's spectacular new 3D film, The Life of Pi , based on Yann Martel's 2001 fantasy novel, is the sensation of the CinemaCon convention, casting more predictable blockbusters, such as Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and Ridley Scott's Prometheus, into the shade. Lee - whose films have ranged from the extraordinarily moving The Ice Storm , the equally powerful, Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain , through the thrills and astonishing beauty of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon  to the more gentle but still controversial romantic comedy, The Wedding Banquet  (Lee's American debut as a director) - has an almost unrivaled ability to take whatever material he is working with and find its deepest emotional roots. Writing in The Wrap, Brent Lang commented that, " If Avatar was 3D's Birth of a Nation , then Ang Lee's Life of Pi m